


I Do

by myadamantiumheart



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myadamantiumheart/pseuds/myadamantiumheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course they end up undercover as a married couple, because that's just how Tim's life works, and he's long since given up fighting whatever cliched, merciless deity controls his missions. </p><p>Or, how Jason Todd infiltrated the PTA and Tim Drake learned to fear suburbia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Set Them Up

**Author's Note:**

> Set in a softer future than will probably occur in any canon ever, and wholeheartedly dedicated to JD, Julia, and Miss Hearts, all of whom have listened to me flip out about this plot bunny the past few days.

“I do,” says Tim, looking vaguely nauseated from the last blow to the head he’d taken on patrol, his cowl pushed back and his hair sweaty. The twenty-two year old glances down at the paper before signing it. It was kind enough, he supposes, of Bruce to at least let him sign it himself, instead of signing it for him in what he assumes would be a perfect copy of his signature.

“I do,” says Jason, rolling his eyes and signing it beside Tim’s name with a flourish of the ball point pen. He shrugs a little, his leather jacket squeaking faintly with the early June rain, his hair wet and plastered down. “Christ above, Dickie, did we really need to have a fake marriage license for this op? You really think they’re gonna background check Tim Drake and his new husband?”

“Who said anything about it being a  _fake_  license?” Dick says, the very picture of faux-innocence.

And that’s how Tim ended up married to Jason Todd.

Forty three days ago, Bruce got wind of a toxin being tested in a California lab- apparently, the lab had been testing soil samples from a crime scene in a Bay Area development, and when the samples turned up some unidentifiable toxins, one of the younger (far more agreeable) scientists had called Vic to see if they could use his lab, considering it was only about twenty minutes away, and far more advanced. Vic had taken one look at it, recognized a designer molecule present in all of Jonathan Crane’s chemicals, and immediately called the Gotham branch of things. A follow up hadn’t been easy.

The soil samples were taken from a development only eight years old, a community of young, successful families with parents who had come from middle class neighborhoods, married right out of high school, and were living the nuclear family dream. The houses were cookie-cutter, the lawns were pristine as per the housing association requirements, and the neighborhood pool was Olympic sized. There was a specific elementary school inside the neighborhood boundaries, and kids went to nearby, affluent middle and high schools.

It was suburbia at its finest and most suspicious, and the facade of normality was so ironclad that even though Bruce had no doubt in his mind that Crane was somehow behind this, he couldn’t figure out exactly how, or what the motives would be. What, exactly, was he testing? How was he getting it into the people? Unfortunately, the type of unrestrained carte blanche Bruce had in Gotham only went so far in Silicon Valley, and their sources and methods of getting information were limited.

Which is why Tim and Jason were going to infiltrate the development, under the guise of of a newly married couple looking to settle down and dance around the idea of children. Damian was still too young, at fifteen- Stephanie was busy here, with a preceptorship at Mercy General. Cass not only refused, but she was noticeably more scarred in ways that would draw more attention on a female. Dick was too old, and Bruce was far too old. It was tempting to ask Roy to bring Lian along for a favor, but Roy wouldn’t put Lian near anything dangerous, not if it had the possibility to hurt her without them even knowing.

But Tim, at twenty-two, and Jason, at a revived twenty-five, were the perfect age range. And, as Dick had oh-so-helpfully pointed out, it wouldn’t be all that unusual if Timothy Drake-Wayne decided to move to a quiet, lower profile neighborhood on the opposite coast if he was thinking about starting a family. Besides, Dick had also said, Jason looks like just the type of bad-boy secret teddy bear that a guy like Tim would fall for.

“Jason Peter Drake,” Dick sing-songed down at them from the stairway as they shoved their suitcases in the Bat-Plane along with the boxes of things from Tim’s apartment that would make their home look more believable. “Timothy Jackson Todd, Timothy Jackson Drake Todd, Timothy Jackson Drake Wayne Todd, Jason Peter Drake Wayne Todd, Jason Peter Todd Drake-”

“We get it,” Jason grunted over his shoulder, heaving the last box into the cargo and locking it up securely. “I swear to god, Dick. We understand. You think this is funny. It’s so hilarious. Wow, how hilarious is this.  _I illegally married my two younger adopted siblings, that is just so_ _funny_!” Jason said in falsetto. Tim suppressed the urge to laugh, grabbing the last case file from Bruce and letting Cass and Stephanie hug him goodbye. Jason was, most of the time, a total pain in the ass, but at least he and Jason could agree on the relative obnoxiousness of Dick’s antics. Common enemies, he supposed.

Alfred, luckily, appeared with fortifying tupperwares full of lunch to eat on the flight, and frozen moussaka and pork and chard skillet pie for them to eat once they got there, and Dick was forced to stop. Or, as forced to stop as Dick ever really got, obnoxiously kissing their foreheads goodbye (even though he had to forcibly bend Jason down to his level), and waving with fake tears.

He had, as they found out some time later, written “Just Married” on the side of the plane.

The first hour of the flight was uneventful, quiet. Jason ate his pastrami sandwich, and Tim stared out the front windshield, watching the clouds and the gauges of the cockpit carefully. But that couldn’t last, no matter how much Tim dearly wished it would.

“So,” Jason drawled, stretching out, stuffing the empty tupperware back in the insulated cooler and rolling his neck a little to look over at Tim as he dug through the bag of snacks. “I sleep on the left side of the bed.” Tim huffed a little, laughing.

“You sleep on  _all_  sides of the bed, Jason,” he said, grabbing a potato chip out of the bag Jason was opening. “You’re a total bed hog. I swear to god, the last time we had to share a small space for a mission, you actually crushed my kidneys.”

“It’s a king sized bed, Tim,” Jason said through the crunching of chips. “I think I can manage to stay on one side. Unless, that is, you want to cuddle, new hubby,” Jason grinned at him, wiggling his eyebrows, until Tim was snorting and throwing raisins out of his trail mix at him. “Hey, hey, pay attention to the road there. I want to make it to my marriage bed alive.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tim said, grinning despite himself. “Whatever. As long as you don’t make the bed with those godawful Princess Leia sheets, I’m sure you’ll even make it out of your marriage bed alive.”

“Hey, those are classic,” Jason protested, pointing at him accusingly. “Leia is the shit, man.”

“Sure,” Tim said, laughing a little. “But I swear to god if you ever even hint at a metal bikini, you’re gonna regret it. And don’t call me t’hy’la- I will shank you, trekkie.”

“Says the boy who builds computers from scratch? Yeah, ok, geek squad, don’t go calling me circuit board or some shit,” Jason snorted, yawning a little and scratching the back of his neck absentmindedly. “I’ve got the backstory down, though. I used to be a mechanic, you needed your car fixed, I changed your oil, and then I changed your life. It’s a rom-com waiting to happen. They’re gonna eat it up, loverboy,” he said. “Let’s hope we don’t break too many hearts when we have to move out suddenly because we figured out there’s Fear toxin in the PTA bake sale cupcakes.”

Tim nodded, popping his knuckles and sitting back in his seat a little. The silence that followed between them was, while not exactly comfortable, far more relaxed and, though he hesitated to say it, normal than he had ever expected it to be. Even though he’d been working with Jason, instead of being perilously and tentatively somewhat aligned with him, for the better part of three and a half years now, he’d lost a lot of his high hopes for their partnership back when he’d just been Robin, and they’d been hard to regain.

But every time they went out on patrol and Jason had Tim’s back, and Tim had Jason’s back, and the two of them navigated a working relationship that stretched and improved upon the limitations of permissible violence and how much of it Jason needed to work out the kinks, and how much of it Tim needed to let out a little of his often built up stress from DI- it got better. They might never be the brothers Tim had often dreamed of them being when he was still following Jason around with a camera, but they were growing into something better. Something like real partners, which was promising, because they were going to be stuck without patrol on this mission for as long as it took for them to figure out what Crane was up to.

And Tim was going to very carefully not think about how long that could be, considering that he’d be sharing a bed, a house, and a farcical fake marriage with a man who was not only his partner, but also #1 on the “Tim Drake Would Bang” list.

The actual development was really very nice. The lawns were green and vibrant from iron fertilizers, the streets were very well paved, the houses were pristine, and the flowers were in bloom in the afternoon sunlight of the early June Thursday on which they were arriving. Their particular house was an innocuous butter yellow confection of suburban bliss, with a little welcome bow on their mailbox’s flag that had a small booklet attached to it.

“Welcome to Mission Park,” Jason read out loud as Tim fitted the key into the lock and opened up the door to their new house, letting it swing freely as he stepped inside. “Hello new neighbors, we welcome you to the most welcoming community in Silicon Valley, and would like to invite you to the first community garden dinner of the summer this Friday evening. You are welcome to bring a dessert or drinks to share, and we look forward to seeing you around our welcoming streets- jesus christ, how many times can they shove welcome into this thing?”

“That could be very helpful to meeting people, contacts and stuff,” Tim said absently, walking down the hallway to the kitchen. On the counter was the paper from their real estate agent (actually just Garth, via proxy) who had left them the garage door opener and a set of spare keys, along with two key cards to the community pool and gym. “We’ll have to go grocery shopping, though, and get something so that we can whip something up before going. I’ve got to go into the DI branch I’m supposedly liaising with during this investigation tomorrow, but I could always pick something up on the way home.”

“Or, you know, I could do it,” Jason said, rolling his eyes and grabbing the garage door opener and walking back towards the front door. “I do, actually, know how to cook.”

“Are you going to be my house husband?” Tim asked, looking at him funny, following him out. Jason just laughed, sliding into the front seat of the Uhaul they’d used to get all their stuff here. There was a sensible silver Prius hybrid being dropped off tomorrow for Tim, and, to the great amusement of Dick and Steph, a red moped for Jason with little saddlebags for groceries. But for today they had the Uhaul, and so Jason backed it up the driveway, opening the relatively spacious and high ceilinged garage, and backing it in so they could unpack. The garage probably wouldn’t get used for cars while they were here- a training space, more like.

They’d managed to fit the excuse of liking kickboxing into their cover, so a home gym wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.

As Tim watched Jason slide the Uhaul in to park and slip out of the front seat, striding back to open the van’s back doors and start unloading boxes, a bright and cheery voice hailed him from across the low, jasmine covered picket fence that separated their front yard from their right side neighbors.

“Hello!” a rather overly excitable young woman called, waving at him with entirely too much energy. “Hi! Are you two the new neighbors Thomas told us about?” Tim turned, slipping his Tim Drake-Wayne smile on, and nodded, picking his way across the lawn to her. She was short, only about five feet tall, with brightly dyed red hair and dark skin, through which even darker freckles could be seen. Her clothes were simple, black yoga pants with dirt on the knees and a peach colored cotton shirt, and her smile could only be described as beaming.

“Hi, yeah, I’m Tim, and that’s my husband, Jason,” he said smoothly, emphasizing his Gotham accent just a little and pointing back towards Jason, who was doing a great job of not noticing their friendly new neighbor. “Are you our next door neighbors, then?” He smiled wider. She laughed, like his charm was the funniest thing in the world.

“I’m Charlotte Pearce,” she said happily, gesturing to her house with her watering can, sloshing a little liquid on the ground. “My husband, Max, is inside watching the game, but I’m sure you’ll see him around.”

“At the community dinner?” Tim prompted, casually leaning to one side, his hands slipping into his pockets. She laughed again.

“I’m sure! You know, those really are one of the best parts of living in Mission Park,” she said, leaning in a little, almost conspiratorially. “Two nights a month where you only have to cook one dish out of the meal is something I can really get behind. And let me tell you,” she fanned herself melodramatically. “The salsa that the Cordosos from down the street bring is just excellent. Caliente, you know?”

And now it was Tim’s turn to laugh, even as he started a little at the hand that slid around his waist, Jason pulling him back against his vaguely sweaty chest.

“Hello,” Jason said, his breath slightly fast (for show) and his voice rumbling through Tim’s back. “Sorry, I didn’t even notice Tim was meeting the neighbors without me. I’m Jason, nice to meet you,” he stuck out a hand, his body language casual even as they proceeded through their first test.

“Charlotte Pearce!” she said, again, her voice bright and bubbling. Tim could almost feel the beam of Jason’s smile, his most charming grin, and he watched Charlotte’s cheeks tint a little bit pink under the force of it. She seemed to almost be bouncing up and down in place excitedly.

“Will we see you tomorrow at the dinner?” Jason asked, as though he hadn’t probably already heard her answer as he was approaching.

“Sure will! I was just telling your husband, it’s just a wonderful event. I’m just so glad you’ll be coming!” She glanced at her watch, a moue of disappointment curdling on her face. “Oh gosh, I left a lasgna in the oven, my gosh, well- it was very nice meeting you two, and I’ll see you tomorrow, but I’ve got to run!”

They watched her go with halfhearted waves, and Jason exhaled against his hair, ruffling it. Tim laughed, turning around. He was about to make for the garage, but Jason’s fingers were still around his waist, and he found himself stopped in his tracks.

“Where do you think you’re going, husband?” Jason said, his eyes dancing as he tugged Tim in towards his chest. “I think it’s time for Public Display of Affection number one. After all, we’re just so thrilled to be moving in to the most welcoming community in Silicon Valley, and we have, after all, just met a neighbor more hyperactive than Dick and Stephie after a liter of Mexican coca-cola.” Tim tried to laugh, but it came out more sad and pathetic than he’d hoped, and Jason’s smile softened a little bit. “I promise I don’t bite,” he said, before leaning down and kissing Tim firmly on the mouth. He lingered a little, kissing Tim’s cheek, and brushing the hair from his forehead, before stepping back and linking their fingers. “Not unless you want me to,” he added, yanking Tim towards the garage with a mischievous grin.

Tim used their linked hands to hit him, unable to hide his own grin, and told himself the flush was just the rush of adrenaline at possibly having their cover blown at any time.

Unpacking their house wasn’t very difficult, although it was less an equal distribution of labor that Jason felt should have been inherent in their legal contract of (faux) marriage and more of Jason unpacking things and Tim setting them up in a somewhat obsessive-compulsive manner so they seemed casually strewn together, a mix of Jason and Tim’s personalities. The house had come somewhat furnished, with a mattress already having been delivered and set up there by a helpful Titans liaison, and two love seats and a couch in the living room with the big flat screen TV.

Jason’s old VHS collection went in a stack next to the VHS player, and Tim’s DVDs got stacked neatly underneath the armoire holding the TV. Their CDs got intermingled, and Jason cringed at the way The Clash looked next to Enya’s Amarantine album. A few prints of photos Jason found unbearably familiar but still distinctly unpinnable went up in the living room and the hallways, and their bedroom, painting a deep red and gold, got a large print of Klimt’s The Kissdirectly across from their huge bed.

True to his word, he didn’t put the Leia sheets on (no matter how funny it would have been to see Tim’s face when he walked out of the bathroom from his shower to see them). Instead, he put on some boring, ivory ones with red stripes, and the tarnished gold duvet, pulling on his pajama pants and opening his laptop, sitting at the head of the bed with his back against the headboard.

It was weirdly domestic, for all the he’d been prepared for it to be. But he didn’t really mind seeing Tim come out of the bathroom with his own pajama pants on, chest sleekly muscled and lithe, scarred and pale in the dim amber of the bedside lamps and the moonlight streaming in from outside.

They’d been slowly moving past their differences for a few years now, and at this point, with all the work Bruce had been putting them together on (like Bruce did, in that way that made it clear he couldn’t technically make them do anything together, but that he’d really like them to, and also totally coincidentally the things he’d like them to do were matched up with the investigations they were already conduction), they’d become partners. A partnership that Jason was fairly comfortable in, actually. The baby bird had stretched his wings a little and become more flexible on the violence thing, and Jason had stopped shooting to kill.

It wasn’t perfect, considering the fact that neither of them were exactly the easiest of personalities to get along with, but it worked, and they’d had each other’s backs when that’s what had mattered.

And, you know, the kid was hot. Which didn’t hurt the whole ‘sleeping in the same bed, PDA and lemonade stands in suburbia’ thing.

“Bruce wants us to check in at least once every two days using the secure channels I’ve set up on my computer,” Tim said, climbing into bed, his laptop already whirring on the mattress next to his pillow. “I think Dick said something about skyping him, but I’m assuming we’re going to ignore that entirely and let him suffer, considering the things he’s been doing recently.”

“Obnoxious little fucker can miss us until his perfect ass falls off, for all I care,” Jason agreed, his eyes scanning the case files one more time. Sometimes, after a good period of not looking at them, he’d catch something different. But, unfortunately, he didn’t see anything jump out at him he hadn’t already flagged the day before, when they’d been busy packing their things and going over mission parameters (he scoffed at Bruce’s mission parameters) in the Cave.

With a quick check of his email (a recipe for something entirely disgusting looking from Kory for his new ‘husband’, and did he ever have to thank Roy for not keeping this mission quiet, wow, he sure did, he should thank him with something nice and thoughtful like a punch to the gut), he shut the laptop, sliding it onto the bottom shelf of his night table.

“Please tell me you’re not going to be the type of husband that works through the night,” he said, sliding down in bed and turning his lamp off. “I will haunt you when I inevitably die again if you make me sleep to the sound of keyboard tapping.” Tim huffed a laugh, flicking a program on to run on standby, and shutting his own computer. He looked over at Jason as he set it aside, and shook his head.

“I promise I’ll try not to be the workaholic husband that leaves you here all on your lonesome and brings his work home with him,” Tim said, his voice amused, as he turned off his bedside lamp. He slid down, curling his fingers over the edge of the duvet, and pulled it up.

“I knew what I was getting into when I married a Bat,” Jason yawned, closing his eyes, forcing himself not to look over at the man beside him, and the smile he could hear in Tim’s voice.

“Goodnight, Jason,” Tim murmured through his grin.

“G’night, husband.”

The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was that laugh, soft and sweet across the too-wide space between them.


	2. Investigate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something off about the mind-numbingly cheerful streets of Mission Park.

When Jason wakes up, he’s slightly surprised to find that Tim has somehow managed to sneak out of bed without waking him. In fact, judging by the grocery list on the kitchen counter and the lightheartedly mocking XOXO on the bottom of the notepaper in careful, precise handwriting, he’s managed to get ready and go to work as well.

It’s not surprising any longer when Jason finally wakes up enough to remember that Tim is some sort of freaky shadow master, and he probably used his weird freaky shadow powers to slip away into the early morning sunlight. Black magic is the most likely answer, so he doesn’t concern himself with it any after that. He throws some leftover trail mix in a bowl and pours a canteen of chocolate milk Alfred sent along over it, like a cereal, and munches on that while he plots out what he’s going to do today.

The most likely option seems to be getting outside and going somewhere, though he can’t figure out where. His phone tells him the grocery store would be a walking option, about a mile away, and so he formally retracts his laughter at Tim bringing reusable shopping bags, and decides he’ll walk for groceries in order to try and meet as many new people as he can.

The type of people who are around at ten in the morning on a summer’s day are the type of people he wants to meet, after all. They’ll have been around when things were most likely going down, and under the guise of figuring out his new community, he can probably compile a list of possible places for whatever toxin Crane’s dumping to be dumped before Tim comes home.

It’s weirdly satisfying to think about the idea of Tim coming home to him, so he squashes that idea and rinses his bowl out, heading for the shower.

It’s a balmy eighty-two degrees outside when he finally leaves the house, hooking the keys onto a lanyard around his neck (Gotham Knights, represent) and making his way slowly down the street. The streets are widely paved, the grass is green, and he can see a few children playing on lawns. School is probably just getting out for the summer this week, or maybe next week- a prime time for as many people home as much of the time as possible, which is part of what worries him. If Crane were to strike in these first weeks of summer, he’d hit the maximum amount of civilians.

The kids he passes are overwhelmingly hyperactive, waving to him cheerily and batting small wiffle balls back and forth with badminton rackets across a conjoined lawn of two houses. There isn’t anything obviously wrong with them, which is, Jason thinks, probably a good thing. The community pool is packed, full of screaming children and pool noodles being stuffed down swim trunks like every boy child in the world comes pre programmed to think that’s a funny joke.

It’s the epitome of suburbia- it makes the back of his neck itch uncomfortably. There’s no litter on the ground, and the sun is shining without clouds, and he swears he can taste the fresh sea air from here. It’s unseemly, the amount of cheer and goodwill and white picket fences.

Past the community pool is the school complex, with a brightly gleaming playground that seems to be covered in small, clinging bodies, and a few exceedingly smile-y yard monitors standing around, helping children with basketballs and soccer balls and hula hoops. There’s a big sign on one of the portable classrooms that says “Mission Park Summer Fun Camp”, with rainbow handprints all over it. On the chain link fence (somehow improbably less menacing than chain link fences in Gotham), where the gate to the school is, there’s another big sign, hooking onto the links with zip ties.

“Summer PTA Meetings Start Now!” it proclaims, practically yelling at Jason with its bright purple letters in some god-awful font. Probably Comic Sans, now that Jason looks a little closer. “Make A Difference In Your Community By Improving Our School For Fall Trimester!”

There are an awful lot of capital letters, and a hell of a lot of exclamatory clip-arts plastered across the oil-cloth sign, but it doesn’t seem like a bad idea, actually. According to the sign, meetings start on Monday night, which seems convenient. He wonders if they’ll let him or Tim in, given they have no children, but perhaps they can use the excuse of wanting to better the community. Maybe they can use the excuse of one day having children, again.

Maybe he can ask about it when they go to that community dinner tonight.

God, there sure seem to be a lot of community things in this neighborhood.

He sees a few ladies walking with strollers, jogging clothes on and diaper bags firmly strapped to the back of each stroller, children babbling peaceably at each other from their seats. They smile at him, one or two of them looking him up and down in a probably subtle for anyone not Batman trained way, and he continues on. It’s vaguely unsettling, but, Jason thinks, normal.

Along the road to the grocery store, he counts eighteen spigots that could be tapped, ten fire hydrants, twenty three drip watering systems, six water fountains at the elementary and community pool, and, as he nears the grocery store, the community garden. The community garden is every bit as bucolic as he would have imagined it.

The Mission Parks neighborhood community garden is built for a community of about five hundred (all seven blocks of large Mission Park houses), with a large center pavillion full of nice picnic tables and a cement floor. There are already checkered tablecloths on the picnic tables, and one long table set out, presumably for the potluck food. With gently waving sunflowers, huge trellises of beans and peas, towering tomato plants, twining zucchini and squash blossoms, bushy carrot tops, and massive kale leaves all swaying in the breeze, it looks like some sort of strange idyllic forest of vegetables of unusual size.

There’s a wooden sign with a chalkboard panel on it, and neat chalk print that says “This Week’s Ripe Crop is: Snap Peas”. A small board has a circular rotation of which block’s turn it is to care for the garden this week. Jason makes a note- he’ll grab some peas and Tim can test them.

But, as he’s entering the cool, air conditioned haven of the grocery store, he can’t think of anything really suspicious, other than the strange cheeriness of the neighborhood. Maybe that’s what neighborhoods are like in suburban areas outside of Gotham, though. Still, it seems worth investigating. As does the increasingly delicious smell of strong coffee emanating from the small coffee kiosk inside of the grocery.

It’s clearly time for some strong shots of espresso. He has to keep up with the permeating pep and cheer around here somehow.  

The people in the grocery are overwhelmingly friendly, which doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary, considering the amount of people who waved and said hello to him on his way here. Someone’s there at every turn, ready to help him pick the best kind of bagged tea, or the best possible pear, and the man at the meat counter talks to him in the kind of conspiratorial manner that a small town barber might, helpful and brimming with extraneous information.

It’s strange and domestic, to think while he’s shopping about Tim.

Does Tim like pears that are more ripe, or more crisp? Does he have an addiction to putting sriracha sauce on everything like Steph often loudly proclaims Dick does?

Does he prefer chocolate magic shell on his ice cream, or strawberry syrup?

Would Tim eat spaghetti and meatballs if he made them? Or would he prefer Jason make lasagna? Does he like granola for breakfast, or corn flakes, or does he not eat cereal at all? (Dick probably calls him a freak of nature if he doesn’t.)

Is he one of those rabbit food types, who only eats salads and stuff? Does that mean Jason should make salad nicoise? Or cobb salad, because that’s basically the most badass of salads?

Sometimes, when he was young and they had a little money, Jason would be the one grocery shopping, and he used to sit for hours carefully cutting out coupons so that he could bring home food that would impress his mother and make her tired face split into a smile that filled him up like sweet, syrupy golden ichor. Jason used to coupon game hard, clipping those dotted lines and shopping the aisles with such careful precision that he might even have a few dollars left over at the end to return to his mom.

It was a hard habit to break, and even now, it’s hard not to just go through the aisles, looking for the best deals, the things it’s acceptable to go store brand on and the things you have to keep name brand automatically sorting themselves in his head. He reminds himself that Bruce is funding this expedition, but it’s hard not to. He laughs at himself when he goes for the store brand instant oatmeal on instinct, and he buys the ingredients for the cupcakes all in name brand, just as an indulgence. It feels good, actually. It feels a little like when he would go along with Alfred on shopping excursions sometimes, and be reminded that hey, he didn’t have to cut coupons any more. He was gonna be fine, now. He was gonna be taken care of.

The woman at the check out is, you guessed it- horrifyingly happy that he’s just moved in, and gushing with praise for the neighborhood. She promises she’ll see him at the community dinner tonight. He can’t decide if he’s excited or really, really dreading it.

Perhaps he’s excited simply because it promises to be entertaining to watch Tim turn Timothy Drake-Wayne on these unsuspecting plebeians.

They won’t know what hit ‘em.

\----

Tim is not having a good day at work. The branch he’s supposed to be liaising with is full of incompetents, the weather is balmy and unattractively windy enough that his tie blew in his face while he was trying to address the heads of the branch in a manner that made them fear for their eternal souls, and the food in the cafeteria is absolutely abhorrent.

At four pm, an hour before he’s supposed to leave for the day, he’s been condescended to so many times that he actually calls a 4:30 meeting to ‘formally introduce himself’ and, essentially, put the fear of god in them all.

“I’m Timothy Drake-Wayne,” he says, looking at the assembled employees, doing his best ‘Batman is disappointed in you, Robin’ face. From the look in their eyes, he’s doing it very well. “And I’m here to liaise with all of you at this branch while we investigate a new line of products for the company. It’s very important to me that we keep everything efficient here and make the most of my time, because I will be moving back to Gotham to work on my other responsibilities very soon.” Not soon enough, he doesn’t say. “I hope I can be of help during this research project, and if you have any questions for either me or my business partner, Mr. Wayne, then there’s a number for a secretary you can call on the business cards I handed out at the beginning of the day. I hope you kept them.”

He leaves the building feeling marginally more satisfied with himself, now that he’s made more than a few engineers and pompous bureaucrats shit themselves with a patented Batfamily expression.

It’s really strange to think he’s coming home to someone, but when he pulls into the driveway of the house in Mission Park, the lights in the kitchen are on, and Tim can see Jason unselfconsciously dancing around the kitchen, waving a spatula in what appear to be dance moves. He’s not quite sure. It’s kind of nice.

It’s kind of nice, not to come home to an empty house.

He can remember years of coming home to a big, empty house after school, not even bothering to call out “Is anyone home?” because the way it echoed back at him from the hollow corners of the house sometimes made him want to cry. There weren’t people around, not really. Occasionally, maybe, someone from school might come home with him for sandwiches left over by Mrs. Mac.

But he would think about what it would be like to come home to someone, when he was feeling really lonely. When he started to follow Batman and Robin, he would think about what it might be like to come home to Bruce and Dick, with Alfred waiting for him in the kitchen with a plate piled high with all his favorite snacks. How there would be a bowl of pretzel sticks and another bowl of peanut butter to dip in them, and he would sit next to Dick, and they would do their homework side by side.

And then, later, he thought about what it might be like to come home from school with Jason, walking home together, or getting picked up by Alfred. How it might be nice to laugh with Jason, and how it might be nice to know that down the hallway, Jason was sleeping, and so was Bruce, and Alfred too.

He wasn’t alone in the house, and when he closed his eyes, there weren’t empty rooms that held the ghosts of parents he’d never really known.

When Tim opens the door with his key, Jason’s singing along badly to a Sara Bareilles song that’s on the radio, yelling out lyrics with a sweet twist to his voice, like he’s trying to do a falsetto just a little bit. Tim can’t help smiling; it’s automatic, an involuntary curling of his lips as the sound of Jason screeching out ‘Who diiiiied, and made you kiiing of aaaaany-thiiiiing’ hits his ears.

“You are not the musically gifted Robin,” he calls out, setting his keys on the hook in the hallway and shucking his shoes next to Jason’s beat up converse.

“Fuck you,” Jason calls back amiably, then- “Come taste this frosting, I can’t tell if I added enough maple syrup.”

“Maple syrup?” Tim sets his laptop case on the counter, loosening his tie and breathing a sigh of relief. Jason waltzes over, a little bit of pink sugar on his cheek and flour all down his front, and shoves a finger covered in frosting into Tim’s mouth. He splutters, stepping back, and-

It’s surprisingly good. Actually, wow. It’s really, really good.

“Where the hell did you learn to do that?” he asks, surprise evident in his voice, and Jason smirks. The little shit, he- he swipes pink frosting onto Tim’s nose, and then Tim is staring stupidly up at him as Jason bends down and licks it off.

“How was your day, hubby?” Jason asks, blatantly ignoring his earlier question. Tim frowns up at him, wiping his nose off.

“Did you really need to lick me?”

“I always need to lick you, baby,” Jason purrs, wiggling his eyebrows ostentatiously. He presses up against Tim, pushing him back into the counter and leaning in. “I’ve been slaving away over a hot easy bake oven for hours, darling, and my feminine needs are unfulfilled. Let me lick you all over, Timothy, take me now on the kitchen floor I waxed with unholy amounts of Lemon scented cleaners-”

“You are the worst,” Tim said, his mouth twitching as he shoved Jason away, elbowing his stomach. “The actual worst.”

“Would the worst husband ever have baked three dozen maple-pecan cupcakes?” Jason asks him, swinging his arm out in a grand gesture, showing off tupperwares full of brightly frosted cupcakes. “Would he have?”

“He did,” Tim says. “He did bake three dozen maple-pecan cupcakes.”

“I think we need relationship counseling,” Jason calls down the hall at him as he leaves to put on more ‘outside community barbeque’ appropriate clothes.

“I think we would need a relationship first,” Tim calls back.

“That hurts me, Timothy,” Jason says from the doorway, shucking his apron and tossing it at Tim, who dodges it adeptly as he tugs off his socks. “It wounds me deeply. You have brokoro my kokoro.”

“Are you picking up slang from Stephanie again?”

“Maybe,” Jason says defensively, grabbing a soft gray tee shirt from the dresser and pulling it over his head. “She’s entertaining, okay?”

“I know,” Tim says drily, wiggling out of his khakis and into a pair of navy cargo shorts and a red teeshirt. “I did date her for quite a while.” Jason makes a face at him, slipping a knife into a thigh holster underneath his shorts.

“Oh, gee, I forgot,” he mutters. “It’s not like she still calls you boyfriend all the time.”

“Aw, are you jealous? Do you feel like the other woman?” Tim brushed past Jason on his way back out to the kitchen.

“I’m going to tell the whole neighborhood you’re still carrying a torch for your ex-girlfriend,” Jason says, sliding sandals onto his feet and grabbing a tupperware full of cupcakes, stacked neatly and impeccably frosted and sprinkled with rainbow jimmies.

“Whatever gets the locals to identify with you,” Tim pinched his cheek and smiled winningly up at the taller man. Jason snorted, shaking his head. The Drake-Wayne charm never ceased to amuse him, all that east coast royalty and glitz with a dash of Brucie glazing over Tim’s genius to smooth social interactions. “Now, let’s go win over a neighborhood, shall we?”

\----

“So, what do you do for a living, Jason?” one of them women asks him, sidling up with a glass of organic punch in her manicured hand and an eyebrow raised flirtatiously.

“I’m a mechanic,” he says, one hand sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck in a maneuver reminiscent of Roy when faced with the combined wrath of Kory and Donna, and laughing. “I know, not as high-profile as what Tim does, but. It’s a passion.”

“A passion?” another one of them says, her eyes narrowing on him, her smile what Jason can only assume is her idea of sultry. “You do look like you’d be very... passionate.”

“Ha,” Jason laughs, shrugging it off, trying not to smirk over at where Tim’s talking some sort of shop with the dads over by the barbeque. He’s been engaging women like this since he was Bruce’s ward- California isn’t all that different, it seems, from Gotham. “Cars are great, you know? I think I fell in love with Tim’s car before I fell in love with him. What a beauty it was, bright red and shining and obviously more expensive than I’d ever be able to afford.” He can see some of the women softening, like they’re on the edge of cooing at him and his lovestruck performance. “But then behind the wheel of every beautiful car there’s an even more beautiful man, I guess. I’m just lucky that beautiful man was willing to give a greasy mechanic a chance.” He hams it up, looking longingly over at Tim, like even the short distance between the two of them is too much. Tim can clearly feel him looking, because he glances back, a small smile on his lips, and Jason makes the kiss he blows him the most ostentatious maneuver of his life.

Tim’s laugh feels like a victory all on its own, even though Jason knows that this is an act, and that’s all it’s likely to ever be.

Some of the women are downright blushing and giggling now, which seems like a little bit of an overreaction to his and Tim’s ‘love story’, but, actually, everything that’s happening here seems like a bit of an overreaction. The children are sort of wildly happy, the moms have been giggling loudly and talking animatedly and asking him all sorts of overly personal questions ever since they got here, in addition to praising how beautiful his cupcakes look (more beautiful than Lucille’s last week, apparently, according to Mrs. Judith), and the dads look very, very... excited about Tim.

“How are the school systems?” he asks, when the adoring and slightly envious stares of the other housewives begin to get to him a little bit. Mrs. Judith, a tall, platinum blond woman who looks like her formative years were spent modeling, smiles overly widely at him with gleaming white teeth and frosted peach lipstick.

“Wonderful,” she gushes, laying one perfectly kept hand on his bicep. “Just wonderful. In fact, we encourage the whole community, even those without children, to have a hand in the elementary school here. Mission Park truly goes by that old adage, it takes a village to raise a child.”

“In fact,” Mrs. Parker says, sidling up to his other side and beaming up at him,”you and your lovely husband are welcome to join our PTA meetings. Monday nights at five pm!”

“You know, I don’t think Tim will be able to get off of work that early,” Jason says, doing his best to look honestly regretful. “But he and I have been discussing children, lately, and...” Jason lets what he hopes is a soft and/or anxiously wishing to be a father type look slide across his face. “I would love to attend, if I could.”

“Oh, you’re thinking about kids?” one of the other women says in a tone of voice that suggests Jason should probably be put up for sainthood for such a thing. “Adoptive, or surrogate?”

“Well, Tim actually doesn’t have a preference,” he laughs self-consciously. “But I sure would love a little girl that had beautiful blue eyes like Tim’s. I’m hoping to convince him that surrogate is a good idea.”

“It’s wonderfully rewarding,” Mrs. Parker assures him. “Just, really rewarding, watching them grow up. I’m sure that if you love kids, you’ll love the PTA meetings. We’re really working on a great way to make sure kids have a wide variety of role models in the community, and I think you could be a very valuable addition.”

Jason tries not to think about what these women would think of him wanting to be a community role model if they knew what he actually did for a living.

Hey, kids, Jason thinks to himself. Are you dark haired, blue eyed, and determined to fight crime? Boy howdy, have I got a career for you! Just abandon your parents and hop in my batmobile, and we’ll have you wearing the red, yellow, and greens in no time.

God, that’s a comical thought. Jason with his own shiny new Robin- his own Robin that isn’t Tim. Tim and Jason with a Robin. Hell, any of the former Robins having a Robin is ridiculous, and Jason’s not altogether sure how Dick managed to keep it together and not laugh at Damian most of the time. The perspective on the other end of the tunnel about how bratty the Robins all were at some points in their various storied careers is laughable.

“Is something funny?” one of the more aggressively tanned moms purrs, the one who had remarked on his probable passions earlier.

“Oh, just thinking of something Tim said earlier,” Jason smiles beatifically. “He’s really wonderfully humorous, you know. It’s one of the things I love most about him.”

“You two must be very happy together,” Mrs. Judith sighs dreamily. “How wonderful. He seems like such a sweetheart.”

“Oh, he really is,” Jason says, bubbles of laughter rising in his chest. “You know, he’s quite reserved normally, but underneath that professional shell of his is the sweet, awkward, loyal guy who totally stole my heart.”

And the weird thing is that when the other wives coo at him and remark on how adorable it all is, Jason doesn’t even feel like he’s telling a lie.

\----

“Is that your prince?” one of the little girls asks Tim with wide eyes when Jason pulls out a chair at the long table for him when they’re sitting down for dinner and gestures melodramatically for him to sit.

“Hi, I’m Prince Charming, nice to meet you,” Jason says before Tim can respond, smiling the smile of a bonafide Disney monarch and leaning around Tim to gently pick up the girl’s hand and kiss it like chivalry never went out of style. The girl giggles wildly, flushing and covering her face with her hands.

“Oh no, Charming, you broke her,” Tim exclaims, smacking Jason’s shoulder. “Wait outside in the pumpkin, I shouldn’t have brought you out in public.” Jason hides his grin in his glass of punch, watching the other little girls sitting next to the first one burst out laughing.

Tim is unexpectedly good with children, which Jason thinks might be a function of having Superboy and Impulse on his team and basically watching them go through accelerated childhood. Either way it’s actually kind of endearing. The little girls are all looking up at him with wide, adoring eyes, as he tells them about his husband, Prince Charming, and if Jason had one of Babs’ retina cameras right now there would probably be Dick-style blackmail for months.

“Does that make Dick the fairy godmother?” Jason asks, and Tim gives him a scathing look.

“Of course not,” he says, sipping his punch with all the priss expected of a prince. “Everyone knows Alfred’s the magic one.”

\----

The weird thing about the community dinner is that nobody seems to have any disagreements with one another. There aren’t neighbors some people don’t like, the Cordosos did indeed bring salsa picante, and everyone’s amiable and well-mannered. Tim cannot for the life of him figure out where all the energy is coming from, though. He asks several of the parents about caffeine consumption under the guise of thinking about things to feed potential future children.

Apparently they don’t consume any simulants, which is interesting, considering they’re all displaying symptoms of what could be caffeine overdose. Increased pulse that he can feel when he casually lays his hand on the crook of someone’s elbow, clear dry mouth, sweating overly, an inability to keep still.

They’re getting a stimulant somehow, and it’s just more proof that Crane has been dumping something into some system.

It winds down around nine o’clock, everyone packing their children up and off towards the rows of perfect houses, and Tim and Jason staying behind to help clean up. Jason’s gotten a lot of compliments on the cupcakes, so he distracts the remaining men and women with a funny anecdote about making the cupcakes for his ‘grandfather’.

Tim’s kind of curious if Jason ever really did do that with Alfred.

He takes a sample of the water from the drip system of the garden surreptitiously while Jason’s animatedly describing how the frosting got ‘all over the kitchen and also me’, and tucks it away. They’re going to know for sure whether it’s the water that’s getting the toxin in by tomorrow morning, once Tim drops the samples into his miniature lab he’s set up in the attic of their house.

They walk home in relative silence, down manicured streets, under the amber pools of light from the street lamps, and it’s kinda nice. It’s cooler out, now, and Jason grabs Tim’s hand nonchalantly as they leave, smirking up at the stars like he’s not proud of Tim’s faint blush and totally looking the other direction, tupperware tucked under his other arm.

Tim thinks of doing this many days in a row, of coming home to bad singing and lame jokes and Jason’s hand, warm in his. He thinks of maybe just tugging on Jason’s hand and saying “Hey, I like this and I like you and we should do this all the time.”

Jason thinks of maybe gently shoving Tim up against one of the street lamps and dropping all the tupperware and kissing him underneath the full June moon and all the stars, the fog that’s slowly rolling in witness to his final break in control.

But neither one of them do anything of the sort, and so the fog rolls in without scandal and both of them feel a curious sort of hollow when their hands part ways in the foyer of the house.


End file.
